Succulents and More™

I’d better get this edition of “This and that” posted before early November becomes mid-November. Time is moving much too fast for my liking, especially since what we’re moving towards is winter , my least favorite season. I’m still finding it hard to accept reality when daytime temperatures are in the 70s, but nighttime lows in the low 40s don’t lie. Many South African bulbs are dormant in the summer and wake up in the fall. Here are a few in my garden. All of them are Boophone disticha . The degree of waviness seems to vary from year to year. This year, these are two waviest specimens: Boophone disticha The large specimen below has completely straight leaves this year. Last year, they were noticeably move wavy. Boophone disticha While most aloes in my garden won’t flower for a few months yet, one of my favorite species is starting now, Aloe lukeana from Uganda. The flower heads are very distinctive: Aloe lukeana Kyle’s and my plant sale last weekend far exceeded our expectations. O...

As much as gardeners love to talk about plants, they love to talk about bugs just as much. At the top of the list of the most common and most annoying pests are mealybugs. Virtually every gardener I talk with is embroiled in a neverending and seemingly futile battle with the fuzzy buggers. I’ve written about mealybugs before ( as early as 2011 !), but it’s a topic that’s worth revisiting. Mealybugs are tiny unarmored scale insects found in warm, dry habitats. What we typically see are the females. They’re covered with a protective white, waxy, or cottony powder. Most retain their legs and can move slowly. In contrast, the males are winged, look like fluffy gnats, and live only briefly to fertilize females. Citrophilus mealybug ( Pseudococcus calceolariae ), one many mealybug species Q. Holdman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Mealybugs use needle-like mouthparts to pierce plant tissue and suck the sap. This causes what we typically see: yellowing or stippling, stunted growth, leaf...

I haven’t done a proper tour of our own garden in a while. Time to fix that. This post shows the front yard at the end of October 2026. I’ll have a tour of the backyard in due time. Look at this Google satellite photo of our property to get your bearing. The tour starts at the far end of the L-shaped sidewalk bed (on the right in the photo below) and then continues in the direction of the arrow: ↷ Our property ends (or begins) at the communal mailboxes on the right: ↷ The apple-green aloe is Aloe vaombe × spectabilis : ↷ The tall orange-red aloe is Aloe ‘Erik the Red’. It's stressed because it didn't receive much water over the summer. As we head into the cool and rainy season, the leaves will turn green and plump up. ↷ The silver leaves belong to Eucalyptus macrocarpa , a mallee (tall shrub with multiple trunks) from Western Australia where it’s commonly known as “mottlecah” or “rose of the west:” ↷ On the right is Agave ovatifolia , in the middle Yucca rostrata : ↷ To...